Changing Coleus Colors with Sunlight Levels (growing in bright light vs indirect light)

One of the fun things about coleus plants is that they can change how much color they have based on how much they are exposed to light (the ratios of colors change in new growth, it won't change what colors are there).  I kept two clippings from my coleus propagation success and left one in a southern window (lots of sunlight) and one in a bright room but away from direct light. The results are pretty easy to see: more light meant more of the dark red coloring, and less light meant less red and more white/green.  In general, coleus will produce darker colors if exposed to more light, and more lighter colors if they get less light.

On the left: Coleus grown in bright sunlight (southern window).  On the right: Coleus grown with only indirect light.

Minnesota Weather Extremes

From weather.com

Rhubarb Punch

Every summer the large patch of Rhubarb at my house goes bananas (oddly it does not go rhubarbs) and grows like crazy, leaving me with far more rhubarb than I can usually use.  So this year I decided to make Rhubarb Punch, which is a great refreshing beverage for the first hot days of summer.

Ingredients (very flexible):
4 cups rhubarb
4 cups water
1 cup white sugar (or less, 1 cup makes it very sweet)
1 can frozen lemonade concentrate
2 Liters Sprite/Sierra Mist/7-Up/fizzy citrus soda


                                           Directions:

Chop rhubarb into inch or so pieces and  put in water.

Bring to a boil then let simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Strain out the rhubarb flesh, keeping only the delicious pink rhubarb juice.

Add sugar and stir until dissolved.

Add frozen lemonade concentrate and mix.
Add citrus-flavored pop of your choosing and mix.

Drink!  I like to also add crushed ice for extra refreshing-ness.

3D Dinosaurs from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Some stereoscopic images I made from pictures I took at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA.  The best dinosaur exhibit I've ever seen; no question.  I highly recommend everyone go there! Took these photos with my Canon Powershot SD980 IS (see sidebar).

See The Dinosaurs Yourself!

How to make 3D photos like these

Spring Bulb Flowers

Thought I would add a post on what some of those early spring bulbs look like once they flower!  As always this is the awesome macro setting on my digital camera, the Canon Powershot SD980 IS.  Here's the article on identifying early spring bulbs when they just start shooting out of the ground. Here we have tulips, hyacinth, crocuses, day lilly, bearded iris, squill, and three types of daffodils (the day lilly and Iris are from last year since they are not yet blooming!).  As usual, the super awesome resolution on the macro setting for this camera is greater than what I can upload here, so just know that these photos can be zoomed in significantly more and still be super sharp! See more macro photos here.

   This is the camera!

Photo List of Plants for Shade Garden

This is a list (with photos) of the plants I used in my landscaping project on the shady hill in front of my house.  Apologies for the bad photos, they are close-ups from larger shots. 

Ajuga reptans:  A nice ground cover.  Has colorful leaves and little blue flowers. 

Astilbe (astilbe chinensis): Has nice bright flowers for a shade plant, in a variety of colors (red, pink, purple, white and possibly others).

Brunnera macrophylla: I have two different types of this; 'emerald myst' and 'jack frost.'  They have nice big leaves with interesting patterns, and help add texture to the landscape.  Also have very pretty little blue flowers in the spring.

Cimicifuga racemosa:  Another good texture addition.  Leaves can be green to dark burgandy. 

Coral Bells (heuchera villosa):  Available in a variety of colors, with varying degrees of shade tolerance.

Bleeding Hearts (dicentra spectabilis): A very bright flowering plant that grows large in the spring but then fades back during the rest of the summer.  Available with green or gold foliage.

Hosta (hosta fortunei):  The standard filler for shade gardens.  They come in different sizes, colors, and patterns, and are extremely hardy and amazing. 

 Japanese spurge (pachysandra terminalis): Another ground cover, this one spreads quickly and is evergreen. 

How to make Ukranian Easter Eggs: Step-by-Step Pysanky

It's almost Easter again, so I thought I would show a step-by-step of how I made this year's Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs).  For the basics of Pysanky and tips I've picked up while learning, click here.  This year I am re-using dye from last year, by simply adding a little less than a tablespoon of white vinegar to the dye to refresh it (do NOT add vinegar to yellow, gold, or orange dyes, they do not need it and will be ruined). 



First, I drew my rough ideas for the egg on a piece of paper.  It took awhile to plan what all I wanted to have on the egg and the order of how to do the colors.  Remember that with Pysanky, you always draw the lightest colors on first, then get darker, so it takes a bit of planning to make a design.  You can get around this a bit by spot coloring areas with q-tips, but this only works for small areas.  The image on the right shows two quarters of the design.  The green grass runs around the entire design, and the bottom is a sunflower made by connecting the points of every blade of grass to a circle at the bottom of the egg.  The top is a sun (shown completely on the right).

To draw on the egg, I start with drawing vertical lines to divide the egg in four (it's easiest to hold the pencil in one place, and rotate the egg underneath).  Then I continue dividing the egg into 8ths and then 16ths.  Finally I draw horizontal lines to show where I am going to put in specific parts of the design.  In this case, these lines will show me where to put the diamonds that will make the grass in this design.  Remember, you can always erase lines after you dye the egg, but do not erase lines on the egg before you dye or the dye will not stay well.

After drawing in the grass diamonds, I drew a circle around the top of the egg to be the sun.  This was followed with points coming off in four directions, then adding four more points between these.

To make the sun more geometric, I then connected the points along the main edges, connecting each point with the point three away from it (See design schematic).

I then drew the sunflower for the bottom of the egg.  I connected all the points of the grass diamonds at the bottom of the egg, then drew a small circle to make the center of the sunflower.








Next I drew in the flowers.  I gave each flower pattern one quarter of the egg.  I alternated roses (single) and the smaller crocuses (two per section).

Here you can see I started to wax in the designs.  I decided to outline the grass, sunflower, sun, and crocuses in white, which means they all get outlined before I dye the egg.

  I then spot colored the crocuses with purple by dipping a q-tip in dye and then dabbing the crocuses (having already outlined them in wax helps keep the dye from spilling over).  After the dye has been on the egg for a few minutes, I dab the excess dye off with a clean q-tip, then wait for it to dry completely.  Once dry, I cover the dyed section with wax so that it will not get colored when I dye the whole egg.

My first dye color was gold (a strong yellow, essentially).  I dyed the egg for a few minutes, rotating it periodically to make sure every part got equal coverage.  Now that the egg had been dyed yellow, I waxed over the sun (except for the sections I would dye red), waxed over the sunflower petals, and outlined the roses.

I next spot dyed the rest of the sun and the roses, using the same technique as the crocuses.  It was a little tricky to color the roses this way because they are so large, but it still worked (just took a little longer).  I then waxed over these sections, and dyed the egg light green.

Now dyed green, I waxed the stems of the crocuses, and waxed in every-other blade of grass.  The rest of the grass I spot-dyed dark green, then waxed over them as well.

 Finally I dyed the entire egg light blue, but the color wasn't strong enough to cover over the light green, so I also very briefly dyed the egg in regular blue.









Once the egg was finished, I melted the wax with a candle (careful to keep the egg far enough from the flame so the soot coming off the candle doesn't get on the egg, it's hard to get back off!), then rubbed it off with a paper towel.  You can only melt a bit at a time, so it takes awhile.  Once all the wax was off, I erased the pencil lines that were still visible.  Then I coated the egg in polyurethane.  I let it dry on a stand of four small nails, and after 24 hours hollowed out the egg (see my first article on Pysanky for more details on this).  After my first one of these eggs, I made a few more that were slight variations on the original design (such as the one shown in the very first picture in this post).